What about you? Did it sound different?

Well, I asked Frank a simple but powerful question based on my thoughts and his first answer.

What does "Frank" think about when he thinks about partnerships or building a community of partners? What should we?

Frank: I do think it's a different animal. I'm going to be honest here, when I started—I'm going to give myself a pat on the back—one of the best things I did was, I had this piece of art that I put on the wall and it was basically a cheesy cartoonish drawing of a typical community. It was a village, it had a coffee shop, it had a gas station, it had a church, it had another church, it had a school. My whole message to the team was this is what a community looks like, it's made up of all these different components.

The most beautiful communities that we know, when we think about a beautiful community, what do we say? It has great schools. It has great coffee shops. It has good private businesses. It's very diverse. It's very artsy. It has access to the highways. There's a list of criteria for us with our typical neighborhood / community that we look for. That for me became sort of the strawman for what this partner community is going to look like. We have all these differences, but we're going to bring people together around this common purpose.

The beauty of the B2B community is that you get to dictate what that purpose is, you're building the community. As the founder of the community, you get to set the vision. For us, the commonality was these are all people who are involved in helping people make travel decisions, these are all companies who resell travel in one form or another. By that definition, they moved into this community. Not everybody went to the same church. Not everybody went to the same coffee shop. Not everybody walked their dog in the same park. But we brought them together around this common purpose.

I think if you don't lay the groundwork correctly on what your vision is for the community and what your expectations are, you're going to get sucked into what I call this technology hell of the vendor who is providing the platform dictating to you what a community should look like, and they're really building a community around their technology, not the other way around. So, I think it's really important to have a very clear idea of what does our community look like.

Are you in technology hell?

Are you building your community around tech or your tech needs around your community?

More importantly, do you think of your partner program as a community-building initiative?

We will get back to Frank Belzer in a few minutes, but first it's time for some...

Dope B2B Learnings From The Vault of MarketingProfs Articles

That's right, It's time to dig into the treasure trove of valuable information and pull out two pieces of gold to help you be a better B2B marketer.

Article one this week is: Five Rules for Better Marketing Partnerships by Robbie Baxter

Marketing partnerships can be one of the cheapest, fastest, and easiest ways to grow your business and test new market opportunities. It can also be a black hole for resources.

During the Internet heyday, it was enough to identify a potential partner and a cool idea, sign a contract and "see what happened." But we've begun to realize that although a partnership has no up-front costs... it can be expensive in terms of time, resources and mindshare.

To maximize success, keep the following rules in mind. Well, if you read the article after this live show...

Article two this week is: Avoiding Partnership Pitfalls by Karin Schaff-Glazier

Everyone wants to be your partner, ostensibly to help you increase revenue with the latest and greatest gizmos or "secret weapons."

But too many times we find ourselves in the "partner conversation" with what appears to be a great sales channel, only to find out quickly that it's a one-way street—you're finding sales leads and opportunities while your partner makes the money.

Partnerships, alliances, strategic networks... whatever you call them—they're nothing more than two companies coming together to find ways to leverage each other's products and/or services.

The goal typically centers on finding additional revenue streams and new market entry points.

Want to keep learning more? If so, check the links in the description below after the live show to get access to both amazing MarketingProfs articles.

OK, back to Frank Belzer... Let's dive back into this conversation of Building a Partner Community for B2B Marketing and Sales Success....

Here is what Frank had to say.

Frank: I don't know if the listeners from every vertical or every segment will relate to this, but there is a tendency in B2B across the board for people, there's always an element within any company that prefers direct business over business that comes through sales channels.

Marc Benioff from Salesforce and Brian Halligan from HubSpot are two men that I really admire. Brian, of course, imitated Marc. When Marc started Salesforce, he opened up his API and he opened up the idea of selling through channels. By doing that, they were the fastest growing software company ever. He knew that by working with partners he could provide a level of service, a level of capability, and a level of support that his company was ready to provide, so there was lower attrition, etcetera. HubSpot tried to model something very similar, and they also grew relatively quickly.

I always looked at that and I had a very positive view of resellers. Additionally, my data told me that resellers on average sold better product, they sold longer trips, they sold my premium products, they sold my ancillary product, their per caps, as we call them in the business, were higher than those from the direct side. So, I had a plethora of reasons why we should be working on the trade business, but, of course, you always have elements in your company who don't want to do that, who think it's better to sell direct and automatically assume that direct is more profitable than indirect business.

So, a lot of the pushback came from those elements. Like, "We're going to spend more money on doing something with these partners? Aren't your people already doing that? Why do they need these resources? Can't you just send this via email? Can't you just do this on a free platform?" That was all the pushback that we got. Not to mention that IT stack was getting higher and this involved an element of IT, and they weren't really super keen on doing something that involved working with all of these different partners and the potential complexities that has as well.

What do you think about partnerships?

Do you think they are complex, are they worth it? Have you thought about introducing one into your B2B organization?

What hurdles have gotten in your way?

We're going to get some words of wisdom from Frank Belzer here in a few minutes but right now, it's time to turn the spotlight on you, the MarketingProfs community. Yep, time for...

From The #MPB2B Community

We searched far and wide in the #MPB2B universe to find amazing information and conversation to bring to the masses.

So, first, make sure you are using the hashtag, and second, make sure you have fun and add value to the community.

Then, we'll spotlight you or your crew on the show. This week, it's...

Nancy Harhut

Marketing Creative + Behavioral Science | Author | Keynote speaker | Consultant

Oh yeah! DJ Graffiti, who I met at #mpb2b, will kick off day 2 of #guruconference-the world's largest virtual #emailmarketing event!

GURU Events knows how to plan an amazing online event, so snag your FREE ticket now!

And don't miss the rocking kickoff to day 2 - or day 1, when I reveal 15 Email Mistakes You Don't Even Know You Make - And How to Fix Them Fast!

#persuasion

#guruevents

But you need to check out the description and (The great photo) click that link to check out the post and read or learn more!

Marketing Smarts viewer, I have to ask... are you going to be next to get the spotlight?

Remember, community, use the hashtag #mpb2b on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter and get the light shined on your awesomeness in the next episode or a future episode of the Marketing Smarts Live show!

Pro-tip, it won't hurt if you tag me in your post as well, I'm @georgebthomas on LinkedIn and Twitter.

OK, let's kick it back to Frank Belzer and some words of wisdom around this topic of Building a Partner Community for B2B Marketing and Sales Success.

Here is what Frank Belzer wanted to leave us with...

Frank: One of the things that's happened to us all in marketing, sales, bizdev, all of these places, is that we've had such massive advancements in technology, there are so many tools, there are so many measurement tools. Just do a Google search for marketing analytics and just watch what happens.

I think that's great, and I think those tools are a wonderful complement to what we do, but the bottom line is when I think about whether it's a community or I think about networking... People who were good at networking back in the '80s and '90s were good at networking. They would go to a lot of events, they would create a lot of content, they would hand out a lot of cards, they would meet a lot of people, they would shake a lot of hands. The principles are exactly the same as we have with social networking. If you were a good networker in the '80s, if you have that mindset about getting to know other people, then it works with these platforms.

I think one thing is don't forget about the customer, don't forget about the fundamentals and the basics. We have decades of consumer research out there that proves how people will feel and what people like. Many times, the data that you're going to get from a lot of the analytics tools is measuring what can be measured, but that doesn't mean that's all that is happening or all that is measurable out there.

Don't forget to think about the customer and think about what you're really trying to do. Don't get hung up too much. Don't let the technology become your strategist. I guess that's the bottom line.

Have you enjoyed today's journey? Let us know, use that hashtag #mpb2b on whatever platform you are joining us on.